Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  Behind her back Mrs Moll came in with a plate of little cakes; Anne gave an infinitesimal shake of the head and the housekeeper disappeared.

  'Oh, how he roared! And he denounced darling Bess and my sister Harriet as conspirators!'

  Well, they were, Anne thought uneasily.

  'Canis has made me choose: if I don't go to France to save his shame and quite give up the ... the person in question,' said Georgiana with automatic euphemism, 'I'll never see my childies again. So I've agreed to go into a sort of exile—myself and Bess and the Duncannons and my mother. He's packing us off without a guinea between us. We couldn't pay for the passage if dear Lady Melbourne hadn't raised the sum for us—and God only knows when Canis will let us come home. Or if.'

  Anne stroked the Duchess's arm through her thin silk sleeve. 'It seems strange of a man of liberal views to turn so judgemental,' she murmured.

  'One slip—one méchanceté—and how we women are punished,' Georgiana wailed. 'He—not my husband, you know the very dear person I mean—he begs me to let myself be divorced, he swears he'll marry me—but I couldn't give up Hart and the girls. He's furious, he writes such brutal letters ... But the worst of it is the Duke won't let me bring the little ones abroad with me, nor say farewell to them, even.'

  Anne, her arm round the shaking Duchess, had a moment of clarity. These were the powers men had. Charles Grey could destroy this woman's life by his indiscretion, then write her brutal letters because she wouldn't choose him over her own children. As for the Duke of Devonshire, he could let his wife and mistress and relations starve, or be captured by bandits, perhaps, as they made their way through the chaotic South of France. A husband might be the best of men, or the worst, but that was not the point: his rights were unlimited. She thought of O'Hara, and shivered at the idea that her life could ever have been in his soldier's hands.

  NOVEMBER 1791

  'Do my old eyes deceive me, am I dreaming? Is it really you?' Walpole held out two trembling, swollen-jointed hands to Mary Berry.

  Even on this longed-for day irritation pricked Anne. Really, it was like a burlesque of Lear's reunion with Cordelia, performed on a crimson damask sofa at Strawberry Hill.

  'And darling Agnes! And Father Berry! How astoundingly well you look, after all your perilous voyages and travails.'

  'Oh, you too, sir, very much so,' said Agnes, who was wearing a chic small bonnet.

  'You flatter me, chère fraise,' said Walpole, wiping one eye. 'Oh, there it is, the fatal scar,' he cried, one shaking finger extended towards Mary's nose.

  It was a tiny pink line, under its dusting of powder; her hand shot up to cover it.

  'Didn't one of Fielding's heroines have a broken nose and wasn't she all the more charming for it?' said Anne to lighten the moment.

  Mary gave her a covert smile. They hadn't had a moment to themselves yet. Anne had brought the little terracotta head of herself, but she didn't want to present the gift in front of the whole company. 'Oh, when I was eighteen I would have been cruelly anxious about such a scar, but I've achieved philosophic indifference,' said Mary, not quite convincingly. 'The days of my vanity are over and heaven knows they weren't happy enough to regret.'

  The guests had to be dined, and led all over the house to admire this new piece of china and that arrangement of Holbein prints, and given tea, and wept over again, and shown the latest products of the Strawberry Hill press. They all crowded into the tiny tribune, where Walpole sparkled as he told the story of his own recent fall. 'At ten past four, Tuesday fortnight, my foot caught in this carpet and I crashed down against the marble altar.' He patted it with satisfaction.

  Agnes covered her mouth with a gasp.

  'I bruised the muscles of my side so badly that for two days, I assure you, I couldn't move without screaming. The lucky stroke was I should surely have broken a rib, but that I fell on the cavity whence two of my ribs were removed ten years ago!'

  'You're very noble to call that lucky, sir,' suggested Mr Berry.

  'Well, I mended and lived to see this happy day.' Walpole clapped his hands. 'Now that my wives have returned, not another complaint shall ever pass my lips; I'm ready to dance at my own wedding!'

  Mary gazed at him like a doting mother, Anne thought.

  Over cordials in the small parlour he claimed that the Beau Monde had transmogrified into a nocturnal species since the Berrys had left England. 'They go about like ghosts. It's entirely out of fashion for a woman to be at home before eleven, so they invite you to drop in at midnight—which is rather too late to begin the day, unless one's twenty years old.'

  They laughed in chorus.

  In the evening he led the party across his estate, into the woods, to the slightly ramshackle house that was to be the Berrys' new country home. It had once been known as Cliveden, when his old friend the actress Kitty Clive had lived there, but now it was to be renamed Little Strawberry Hill. 'Don't thank me for fulfilling my own dearest wish,' he protested in the sunny hall.

  'As if we could know where to begin,' said Mary. 'But the fact that it's impossible to thank you sufficiently for your kindness—your burning interest in us, your matchless affection—shouldn't be taken to mean that we forget it.'

  'Pooh,' he said pinkly. 'When two witty young beauties, who might have their pick of distinguished company, choose to throw away so much time on a forlorn antique...'

  Anne couldn't listen to much more of this. Of course, she delighted in her cousin's devotion to the Berrys, but somehow she'd lost her tolerance for his high flights.

  Walpole was wringing Mary's hands like a washerwoman. 'My sole ambition is to live long enough to pass an unbroken summer with my little wives here at Twickenham.'

  'What, only one?' Anne teased him.

  'Oh, I shan't spurn twenty more summers if they're granted to me,' he laughed. 'But one mustn't be presumptuous at seventy-four. And though my eyes, ears, teeth and motion have lasted this long, I don't know that I should care to survive any of them.'

  'You forget to number your mind among your assets, sir,' Mary told him.

  'Ah, my dear girl, how precise of you. I should thank the gods I'm not yet quite a vegetable...'

  'What do you think?' Mary murmured to Anne, tucking her arm into hers as they walked up the second flight of stairs.

  Anne could feel the small fingers against her ribs. After a full year apart, it was strange and delightful. 'Of Little Strawberry? It's quite charming.'

  'No, but ... of us living here. My family. It was all arranged so fast, I still don't know quite what I feel about it.'

  Anne smiled at her. 'He won't accept any rent, I assume?' She knew Walpole had sent the family letters of credit to bankers in every city they were to pass through, just in case they ran short.

  Mary sucked in her lips. 'I've argued the point, but his logic hammers me down. I worry that we'll be seen as taking the most dreadful advantage of him.'

  'Oh, Mary, you're making an old man very happy.'

  'Mrs Damer, should we have these pale-green walls painted cream for a more classical effect?' Agnes called up from the hall.

  'I don't advise it,' said Anne. 'The green suits the pastoral atmosphere.'

  'Will you come and stay here?' Mary asked softly.

  'Try to stop me.' Anne laughed. 'Perhaps you and I could work on our Greek together this year?'

  'Oh, yes. You know,' she said very seriously, 'my body may have only just arrived, but my mind and attention have been with you for months already.' She was flicking through her tiny memorandum book. 'I must go up to town on Tuesday on a business matter.'

  'Then you'll come to dinner at Grosvenor Square,' Anne told her. 'I have that little terracotta of myself to give you.'

  Mary's eyes lit up like dark candles.

  'What are you two in such a huddle about?' called Walpole.

  Anne looked down at him; she was tempted to say none of your business.

  'Little Strawberry Hill, of course,' said Mary, going down th
e stairs. 'How could we speak or think of anything else but this extraordinary gift of yours?'

  DECEMBER 1791

  Eliza avoided going near the hole in Russell Street where the wreckers had reduced Old Drury to dust. She still wasn't used to performing in the cavernous auditorium of the King's Theatre, which rumour said was costing Sheridan far more than he could afford; on its vast stage she'd had to learn to walk more imposingly and throw her voice. Familiar faces were missing; Mrs Siddons, for instance, was taking the waters at Harrogate after a miscarriage caused by the unmentionable ailment passed on by her husband. (It gave Eliza some small pleasure that William Siddons, the source of that hideous epigram, was now the target of malicious talk in his turn.) And who could tell how long the Drury Lane company would be stuck here?

  Today she'd got hold of Mr Holcroft in the Green Room. 'Call me Tom,' he said, grinning at her. 'I may dub myself a playwright these days, but it's not so long since I was an actor, and a shoemaker and stable boy before that, so I'm certainly no gentleman.'

  She gave a tight smile. He was wrong if he thought she'd swear friendship with him because they'd both come up from the gutter. Eliza had become a lady through her own efforts—and this Tom had better not forget it. He might be an old friend of King's and the Kembles', but he was getting a name for radical ideas. 'I fear Sheridan's political sympathies have blinded him to the risks of staging your School for Arrogance,' she said, tapping her script. 'My role, for instance—'

  'Oh, Lucy Peckham's an eloquent Whiggish damsel, rather like yourself, Miss Farren—not an Amazon. You'd never catch her storming a Bastille!'

  'But she might send men out to do it.'

  Holcroft shrugged cheerfully. 'That's their lookout.'

  The man was an outspoken atheist, too. Two years ago this comedy might have prompted cheers, Eliza thought regretfully, but nowadays it could just as easily be denounced as Jacobinical and democratical.

  The boy rapped on the open door. 'Lord Derby outside, ma'am, says to say whenever you're ready—'

  'Yes, yes,' she said. 'If you'll excuse me, Mr Holcroft?' She left him with one of her dazzling smiles, before he had time to object, and collected her mother from the dressing room.

  'Apparently,' murmured Mrs Farren in the draught-whipped corridor, 'Mrs Jordan got horribly hissed last night.'

  'For her acting?'

  Her mother slapped Eliza's hand merrily. 'For her influence over the Duke of Clarence, of course.'

  Eliza smiled like a cat. Gillray's latest cartoon had shown the actress as a chamber pot or Public Jordan, Open to All Parties. Some papers attacked Mrs Jordan for milking the King's third son of a large allowance without even having the decency to retire from the stage, while others jeered at Clarence for living off her salary. She'd been accused of everything from abandoning her children by Ford, to plotting to be a duchess. Eliza was usually sympathetic when her colleagues came under fire in the press, but really, this time she could only rejoice. 'Proof, if any were needed,' she murmured to her mother now, 'that an actress who goes into keeping loses every last shred of dignity...'

  She waited for a smart answer, but Mrs Farren only pursed her lips.

  In the carriage Eliza sank back against the plump upholstery, enveloped in her fur pelisse. 'A long day, my dear?' asked Derby.

  'Too long,' she said. Really, the Earl was like an ideal husband: all the compliments and none of the demands; all the solicitude and none of the orders. 'And you?'

  He gave a concise and witty report on the company at Melbourne House; since poor Georgianas hasty departure Lady Melbourne had become the reigning Foxite hostess. There'd been hosts of émigrés, of course, the royalists glaring furiously at the more recently expelled moderates like Madame de Genlis and a 'rather striking' protégée of hers who went by the name of Pamela Egalité.

  Could Derby possibly be trying to arouse her jealousy by mentioning this girl? Eliza wondered.

  The carriage had slowed to a crawl. Derby rapped on the ceiling and his coachman's head appeared, dangling sideways in the window. 'Sorry about this, M'Lord. There's a fire on Whitehall. They say it might be Richmond House.'

  Eliza had clutched Derby's arm before she knew it. She took her hand away again before her mother noticed.

  'Bring us there, and quickly,' he called.

  'But it's such a crush—'

  'Take the side streets. Use your whip.'

  'Make way!' Eliza heard the man roar, overhead. 'Earl of Derby's carriage, make way!' The whip cracked. A wagon lurched out of the way. Mrs Farren was craning out of the window. Eliza shut her eyes; she felt slightly sick.

  'My dear ladies,' said Derby, 'I'll jump out at the corner of Whitehall and the driver can bring you straight home to Green Street.'

  'I wouldn't dream of it,' said Eliza, injured. Sometimes the man could be too uxorious.

  'Hm, well, I suppose if you stay well back—'

  'Mother,' she said, 'you go on home; I'll come after you in a hackney.'

  'If you promise to be careful,' said Margaret Farren dubiously.

  It appeared to be snowing, but it was ash, falling heavy through the winter air. Richmond House had curtains of flame and it was sending up a black tongue of smoke. Oh, the crackle and the terrible howl of it!

  By the time the driver helped Eliza down from the carriage, Derby had flung off his jacket and sprinted over to the burning building. Eliza felt unaccountably angry. What did he think he was playing at? The Sun Fire Insurance Company wagons were here already and the watermen were passing buckets from hand to hand. Three of them were trying to throw a hose in one window, while another three worked the handpump.

  'Miss Farren! Eliza!'

  She spun round, and there was Anne, with her sister, waving from the other side of the road. She ran to meet them. Anne's eyes were red from the smoke. 'Oh, Lady Mary, I'm so terribly sorry,' said Eliza. 'Has anyone—' She broke off, uncertain how to frame the dreadful question.

  'We're all out, safe and sound,' said the Duchess of Richmond, calm as ever.

  'That looks very like the Duke of York,' said Eliza, staring at the knot of men across the road. It was strange to see them in their shirtsleeves, especially in the middle of winter; indecent, almost. The backs of their waistcoats were much plainer and shorter than the fronts.

  'Mm,' said Lady Mary, 'York's been marvellous, I must say; he brought his regiment in to help with the engines and keep back the crowd. And the Duke of Clarence has been up to his knees in water!'

  'Well, that's a comfort,' said Anne wryly, 'to have two Princes of the Blood acting as your watermen. By the way, I heard York's to get another £18,000 a year on his wedding.'

  'Yes, Derby says Prinny's sick with envy,' confided Eliza. 'Envy only of the money a legitimate marriage brings, of course—not the plain Prussian bride!'

  'Was that Derby I saw plunging into the fray?' Anne asked.

  Eliza nodded. 'He's covered in soot already. Look, he and Bunbury seem to be carrying statues out.'

  'They're the antique casts from his sculpture academy, remember?' said Anne.

  'Oh, yes,' said Eliza, suddenly taken back to that day in Richmond House; that foolish mistake she'd made, thinking all the statues thousands of years old. 'But isn't that one of yours?' she asked, shading her eyes.

  'So it is! A pair of puppies, the first I ever carved,' said Anne, looking relieved.

  'Luckily the fire started slowly,' said Lady Mary, 'so we were able to get the real valuables out hours ago.' She seemed unconscious of the insult to her sister. 'I have my jewels and most of my clothes. The high point of the drama was when Henriette spotted Délice at the window. My husband offered a reward of ro guineas to whoever could rescue her and a fellow passing in the street lashed three ladders together, climbed up and brought the spaniel down!'

  'Yes, and she bit his arm for his pains,' said Anne.

  'Who's that young man?' asked Eliza, tucking her hands into her fox muff to warm them.

  'Oh,
Charles Lennox, our nephew,' answered Lady Mary, 'and heir, of course.'

  Eliza's eyes met Anne's briefly. How strange to know that, because of your barrenness, your husband would have to leave everything to a relation.

  Just then there was a crash and the gentlemen leapt back; something in the great house must have crumbled. 'Oh, our little theatre,' she said, startled by the memory.

  'Charred beams by now.' Anne sounded so bleak that Eliza slid her hand into the crook of her elbow. Anne glanced at her with a ghost of a smile. It was rare for them to be seen to touch, since their renewal of friendship. 'Well, young Lennox's inheritance won't include Richmond House, not unless the insurance pays enough to rebuild it.'

  'I'm afraid there's no question of insurance,' murmured the Duchess.

  'Mary! What do you mean? To let it lapse—'

  'Goodwood's cost such a great deal; we were cutting our expenses, or trying to,' said the Duchess, tight-lipped.

  'But the risk of fires in London—' protested her sister.

  'Oh, it was a gamble, that's all there is to say. At one time or another we all risk more than we should.' Lady Mary wiped ash out of her eyelashes.

  Derby came over, his white shirt daubed with black. His ugliness had taken on a certain grandeur, Eliza thought, like a goblin of the underworld. 'Ladies. Do stand back a little, won't you?'

  'Don't worry about us,' Anne told him. 'I've been thinking of Praxiteles, when he was told his house was on fire.'

  He laughed. 'Trust you to come up with a relevant classical allusion.' A servant brought him a tumbler of beer and he raised it. 'To the passing of the Richmond House Theatre,' he said. 'What times we had!'

  'Almost five years go,' Eliza murmured. Her throat was itching from the fire. She thought she might cry.

  'It feels much longer,' said Anne, her eyes on the burning shell of the house.

  'The scenery was carried out safely, you know,' Lady Mary pointed out.

  'Was it?' said the Earl. 'Well, perhaps we should put on another play, but at Derby House.' Eliza gave him a radiant smile. He seized her and Anne by the hands. 'What do you say, my lovely leading ladies? Shakespeare, perhaps? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun. When shall we thespians meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?'